Owen Eastwood helps world-class teams across sports, corporate, the military and the arts improve their performance. His approach – grounded in indigenous wisdom – centres on the innate human need to belong.

Belonging presents page after page of pragmatic insight that feels true at a cellular level. Mythographer Martin Shaw refers to this deep sense of knowing as ‘bone memory’ – the sensation of knowing something deeply, without being able to explain how or why it is we know it.

Eastwood walks through the various aspects of creating an environment of belonging. He unpicks our species’ biological need for togetherness and desire to feel rooted in ancestry and lineage. We come to know and feel this by listening deeply to each other’s stories. The practice of storytelling aligns and binds us to a shared purpose.

Trust is integral to team effectiveness. All individuals must believe the team at large is working out of shared interest and in support of one another. Tragically, this is anathema in too many workplaces today, where myopic focus on profit, status and competitiveness regularly obliterates any interest in human and team dynamics.

As we teeter towards the endgame of late-stage capitalism, far too many people feel excluded and left behind. It is this very lack of access to opportunity and belonging that fuels populism and support of pathocracy. Until we refocus on the foundation blocks of what it is to be human, we will continue to circle the drain. Belonging is essential source-code for how to rediscover that.